


A new beginning

by Bitterblue



Series: 52 prompts in 52 weeks [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 06:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5656102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitterblue/pseuds/Bitterblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for the main quest. Part of a prompt challenge to write a story each week. The sole survivor contemplates what she's done, with Piper there for support.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A new beginning

There were people inside you couldn't save. The reasons don't matter much, now, standing on newly irradiated ground where everything your son had built once stood.

(The reasons do matter. You destroyed the Institute, but organizations are people and some of those people were children who never had the chance to think any other way. Children like Shaun had been. Trapped and dead because of you.)

(The reasons don't matter. You destroyed the Institute, and organizations are people and all of those people were complicit in the slavery they created, even the children. Children like Shaun had been. Trapped and dead because of you.)

You turn when you hear your name (" _Blue!_ ") to find Piper running over to your spot near the edge of the crater. She stops a few feet short, expression unreadable. "Hey."

"Hey." You look away from her and back to the crater. You're not sure quite where you stand with Piper—she's flirted, you've flirted, but you're afraid to ask her what any of it means. (She might say she wants to be with you.) (She might say she's only joking.) Her following you makes your heart feel heavy, full, uncomfortable. (Maybe it's just the radiation.)

"I'm sorry," she starts, and you're about to cut her off when she continues, "I know you didn't want it to end like this. I know you wanted to, I guess, redeem them. Redeem _him_. But, Blue, sometimes people don't want it. They're stubborn and selfish. They thought what they were doing was right, and they were _wrong_ , but you can't hate yourself for not being able to convince them they were wrong and should change." She steps a little closer, reaching out to touch your elbow. "Look. Nat's not my sister because we're related, she's my sister because I've been there for her and looked after her, y'know?"

You frown a little, raising your eyebrows. "So Shaun wasn't my son because I didn't raise him?"

Piper shrugs, dropping her hand from your arm. "I...yeah. Kind of."

Your pip boy beeps with irritation. You've been standing near the crater and its fresh radiation too long. You sigh, and don't move. "I guess that's kind of what I'm afraid of." The pip boy beeps again. "What if it had been me holding Shaun when we went into the cryo pods? What if Nate had survived instead? Would he have been able to fix this?"

"Oh, _Blue_ ," Piper says, stepping close enough to wrap her arm around your shoulders. "No one could have fixed this."

"You'd have liked him," you say after a quiet minute or two. The light is shifting, reddening, drifting into dusk, which probably accounts for the redness in Piper's cheeks when you look at her. (No, it doesn't.)

She shrugs again, smiling a little wryly, and then steps away from you, hand running across your shoulders and down your arm until she finds your hand, her fingers lacing together with yours. "Not as much as I like you."

"I killed dozens of people." You need her to understand what you've done, even if you don't understand it yourself.

"They were killing us first. Self-defense, Blue. It doesn't change how I feel about you."

You think there's probably a good argument to be made that it should, and you think you _would_ have made it, a lifetime ago. But instead you squeeze her hand, and shrug a little, and tell her (only the tiniest bit exasperated), "Okay."

She smiles, cheeks pink (and it's not the sunset), and begins to pull you away from the ruins. "Good. But, you know, I would prefer if we didn't get killed by super mutants after all this, so let's go home." You follow her, gladly, with the dizzying thought that you would go anywhere with Piper and might start to feel like it's home. (It might just be the radiation.)

(It's not.)


End file.
